The wireless handset presents new opportunities for merchants to communicate with customers. The merchant may wish to provide information to the customer regarding a product or service, offer incentives to the customer to enter a premises or make a purchase, or provide services that utilize the capabilities of the wireless handset.
When a merchant premises is large or the merchant offers a complex variety of products, the customer may require assistance to find a desired product or to attain the information needed about a product to make a purchase decision. An employee of the merchant may be able to provide the needed assistance provided the employee's training and knowledge are sufficient. If the employee is not available or unable to assist, the customer may use a web browser on a wireless handset to find additional information about a desired product or service. However, the small display and interface format of a wireless handset may hinder the customer's effort to use a wireless handset to find information. Thus, there is a need for a custom interface specific to the merchant's offerings, allowing the merchant to provide information to the customer in an efficient and easily navigable fashion.
A merchant wishing to advertise to the customer may wish to leverage the functionality of the customer's wireless handset by providing highly targeted advertising to the user. Although a merchant may use a sign or an LCD display to provide advertising at a specific location on the merchant premises, these advertising mechanisms will typically be directed at the entire range of potential customer demographics, due to the inability of these mechanisms to distinguish among customers. There is a need for a platform allowing the merchant to provide advertising to the customer taking into account the customer's location on or near the merchant premises and personal information about the customer which the customer has chosen to make available to the merchant.
Merchants having loyalty programs or other programs to increase interactions with the customer may rely on postal mail or e-mail to communicate with customers. However, the merchant lacks a means to incorporate the program into the customer experience on the merchant premises. Thus, there is a need for an application running on a wireless handset that allows a merchant to provide the benefits of the loyalty program to the customer while the customer is on or near the merchant's premises.
While the customer may realize a number of benefits from the solutions described above, the customer will be discouraged if the merchant's use of the application fails to meet the customer's needs or exceeds the customer's desire for the information that can be provided to the wireless handset. There is a need for a feedback system which allows the customer to chose or rank which of the provided information is desired and/or helpful. Such a feedback system would ensure that the customer and other future customers would continue to receive the most desirable and useful information provided by the merchant.
Further, customers may only be willing to share personal information that will allow the provided information to be targeted at the customer if the customer has control over what information is provided to the merchant. Thus, there is a need for an information privacy management system which the customer uses to control the information available to the merchant.